Adam de Coster | Baroque / Genre painter

Little is known of the biography of Adam de Coster (1586 in Mechelen - 4 May 1643 in Antwerp).

Born in 1586 in the Flemish city of Mechelen, a province of Antwerp, he appears to have spent much of his career in Antwerp and became a Master of the Guild of Saint Luke around 1607.

His portrait was reproduced as an engraving in Anthony van Dyck's🎨 Iconography, where he was described as "pictor noctium", signaling that his reputation as a painter of night scenes had firmly been established in Northern Europe by the 1630s.

Although documentary evidence only ever records de Coster outside of Antwerp in 1635 when he visited Hamburg, Nicolson has noted that correspondences between his paintings and the works of the Lombard artist Antonio Campi suggest a possible sojourn to Italy.

Jack Vettriano | Pittore Romantico

Jack Hoggan, noto come Jack Vettriano (1951-2025), è un pittore Scozzese di origini italiane, onorato da Elisabetta II d'Inghilterra con l'Ordine dell'Impero Britannico (OBE).

Biografia

Cresce nella città industriale di Methil, Scozia.

La sua è una famiglia povera: "dovevo dividere un unico letto con mio fratello maggiore" racconta; così il futuro artista è spinto a lavorare fin da ragazzino.

Lasciati gli studi a 16 anni, diviene apprendista minerario e comincia a dipingere negli anni settanta con un set di acquerelli ricevuti in regalo per il suo ventunesimo compleanno.

Hubert Robert | Visionary painter

Hubert Robert, (born May 22, 1733, Paris, France - died April 15, 1808, Paris), French🎨 landscape painter sometimes called Robert des Ruines because of his many romantic representations of Roman ruins set in idealized surroundings.

Robert left Paris for Rome in 1754 and studied at the French Academy there.

He also met the French painter Jean-Honoré Fragonard in Rome, and in 1760 they traveled together with the Abbé de Saint-Non through southern Italy on a drawing expedition.

Robert developed a strong fascination with architecture and ruins, and he was strongly influenced by Giovanni Battista Piranesi, the renowned etcher of architectural subjects who was then publishing his great collections of etchings of Roman architecture.

Among Robert’s best-known works from his Roman period is a series of red chalk drawings of the gardens at the Villa d’Este, that feature the garden’s dilapidated Classical-style architecture set in an overgrown landscape and animated with small human figures.

Hubert Robert | The Grande Galerie of the Louvre

Hubert Robert🎨 (22 May 1733 - 15 April 1808), was a French painter🎨, noted for his landscape paintings and picturesque depictions of ruins.

In 1784 Louis XVI appointed him keeper of his pictures and gave him responsibility for creating a museum at the Louvre🎨.

For biographical notes and earlier works by Hubert Robert see:

• Hubert Robert | Visionary painter🎨.

Jorge Ignacio Nazábal, 1962 | Surrealist painter

Jorge Ignacio Nazábal Cowan was born in Havana, Cuba.

He graduated in Biology at the University of Havana in 1985 and worked twelve years as a biologist in a cytogenetics laboratory.

In 1996 he began to study at the Academy of San Alejandro Arts of Havana and graduated from there in 2000.

In 1997 he left his job as a biologist and devoted himself to painting.